Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What recent successes have the Toronto Blue Jays achieved?
All it took was a couple of games against the Boston Red Sox, and everything feels okay again. It's June 18th here, and the Toronto Blue Jays feel like this is becoming a low-key catchphrase, to the extent that it matters to you. On June 18th, the Toronto Blue Jays are back in the playoff spot, despite being 36-38, and at no point having sustained good baseball for any extended stretch here.
But the American League is what it is, and I think the bigger takeaway, rather than, oh, you're in a playoff spot because... Who cares on June 18th? And the playoff odds still have them at around 50-50. If you look at fan graphs, it's like 49%. If we go to jays.baby, which everyone should be checking out every morning and bookmarking as their Jays fan desktop, that has them around 51%.
I think the more headline item than exactly where they are or exactly what the playoff odds are is that the state of the American League outside of the Yankees and Rays is such that you only have to play... a little bit of good baseball to be all right. And the Blue Jays have a lot of ways to go here. 88 games left. They're going to have to play better than 36 and 38 baseball the rest of the way.
But it is not going to take a long run of elite baseball to get yourself fairly comfortable in that playoff position. That's not intended to lower the bar too, too much.
Chapter 2: How effective are bullpen days for the Blue Jays?
But to say that the Jays Just got to get a couple good weeks under their belt here, and things might look okay. They have one more against the Red Sox today. This afternoon, actually, 135 down at Fenway. Trey Savage against Sonny Gray. They've got three at the Chicago Cubs on the weekend. The Cubs are not playing particularly good ball.
And then they've got a seven-game homestand next week against all Texas competition. Three against Houston, four against Texas, or the reverse. I can't remember. And those are teams that you will be fighting with in the wildcard race. So if you string off two good weeks here, it'll still only be late June, early July, and you won't be locked into a playoff spot, certainly.
But in this 16-game and 16-day stretch, which closes with the Mets coming here, heading into Canada today, if you can go something like 10-6, maybe even 11-5, given how you started here and how many of the games are at home, you're going to be in a pretty good spot.
heading into July and the all-star break and the trade deadline and obviously where you are heading into the trade deadline will dictate how aggressive the front office is, which could give you a boost further. Anyway, the Toronto Blue Jays, not playing their absolute best ball so far this season, but have done enough over two days in Boston to get themselves back into an okay spot.
Chapter 3: What insights does Carter Cunningham provide about transitioning to Double-A?
Yesterday, it was a 3-0 victory. where the Red Sox put on their best Blue Jays from the weekend prior hat and went over 12 with runners in scoring position and stranded 13 base runners. They did a lot of that in the first game of the series as well, where Dylan Cease had a runner on second base, if not more, in all five of his innings and managed to get out of there with a zero.
The Jays had zeros across the board on a bullpen day. That was unexpected because Max Scherzer was a late start due to back spasms.
Chapter 4: What challenges does Carter Cunningham face in Double-A baseball?
He hit the IL. Chad Dallas came up. Simeon Woods Richardson handled the ball. Jays win. 3-0. Let's get into it. A little later in the show, we will have New Hampshire Fisher Cats right fielder Carter Cunningham on the show. One of the hotter prospects in the Blue Jays system. college teammate of Trey Savage. So we'll set up Trey Savage and start that way.
AJ Brzezinski will join us in the second hour. Abby Labar of MLB Network and Quick Pitch will join us a little later as well. And we'll get you set for Trey Savage against Sonny Gray. Right now, though, we are joined by of Jay's talk on several weekends and places like the spec and National Post.
Chapter 5: What are AJ Pierzynski's thoughts on Vladimir Guerrero Jr.'s performance?
Caitlin McGrath joins us. Caitlin, how are we doing this morning?
I'm good. How are you?
I'm pretty good. So the Jays win a couple here.
Chapter 6: How are the Chicago White Sox performing this season?
And again, I'm not raising a wild card birth banner on June 18th, but the fact that everything has gone as slowly as it has, the amount of injuries that they've had, and like how much are you looking at where they are right now and thinking they really just got to play a couple of weeks of good ball and they'll be feeling pretty good about where things are, even with the two months of kind of dragging in the mud to start?
Yeah, exactly. I think you laid it out well. I mean, the Blue Jays are lucky in some respects that the American League has unfolded this way this year. Like they've been able to get away with not playing their best baseball and having a significant amount of injuries that really could have derailed their season early. But they've been able to sort of tread water enough.
I think that's sort of the terminology that
a lot of people have been using to describe their season so you know they they weathered those um rocky periods without Kirk obviously he comes back he makes an immediate impact and uh the starting pitching picture is still a bit um messy right now especially as you said with Scherzer going back on the IL right ahead of uh the day that he was supposed to start Luckily, Bieber's on his way back.
So maybe it's not as big of a hole to fill for as long. But in terms of the bigger picture, yeah, like the Blue Jays are still in a good position. Now the division might be out of reach or maybe you just got to put that in the back of your mind. And, you know, that is a bridge to cross if you get there by the time August rolls around, assuming that you get really hot throughout the summer.
But yeah, looking at who's chasing them, it's teams like, as you said, like the Rangers, You have the A's on that list. I think the Orioles are behind them. You know, none of those teams are playing particularly well. They're much like the Blue Jays, kind of hovering under 500, not quite able to get over that hump. So...
Yeah, like the Blue Jays, and even looking ahead where the Blue Jays are in the wildcard mix with its teams like Cleveland's there, which they have been playing better.
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Chapter 7: What perspectives does Abby Labar share on the Blue Jays' current season?
The Mariners are lucky that they play in the West right now, which is very weak, because I think they're in a playoff spot, not even playing very well, playing probably worse than the Blue Jays, or they've been similarly up and down. Yeah. Like the state of the American league is what it is. The blue Jays should be able to take advantage of that.
And as you said, this 16 and 16, always tough to do, especially with the number of injuries they've had and a starter going down, but the schedule is kind of being nice to them. Boston obviously is having a disaster season. The Cubs have been completely up and down all year. Then you have the Astros, not really a competitive team anymore. And the Rangers who are kind of similar to the blue Jays.
So it's, This 16 and 16 actually is a period where they can make up some ground or create some space in that wildcard race, I think.
So a lot of positives from last night's game, in addition to the fact that you're just somehow two games under 500 in a playoff spot. Andres Jimenez had a big one. He stole three bases, which thanks Mickey Gasper. That was five for the Jays as a team.
Chapter 8: What are the implications of injuries for the Blue Jays' pitching staff?
Came up with a couple of hits, good defensive plays. He has obviously, outside of that kind of opening weekend, which he's done two years in a row now, he has not been particularly good this year defensively. There are bigger issues, and we can talk about Vladimir Guerrero Jr. later, although I feel like I've been exhausting it on this show over the last couple of weeks.
How big would it be if they can get Andres Jimenez going a little bit here and the bottom of the order can kind of start rolling things over like this in a positive way?
Yeah, I mean, anywhere you can get it, you're going to take it. If you're the Blue Jays, obviously it's been a bit of a slog offensively for them this year, just not getting the production that they expected to get out of some of those big bats.
The bottom of the order is somewhere where you, it's, I don't know, it's like house money sometimes when you get some production from the bottom of the order, if they can turn it around to the top of the order, especially with George Springer going a little bit now. I know the broadcast was talking about him last night because he's had a couple of nice games in Fenway.
And the fact is that, you know, we do have to probably wonder like as he gets further and further away from that broken toe, if that was causing him to drag a little bit, it certainly seems possible that he I know was playing slightly injured for what much of May probably and maybe the start of June. So the fact that he's coming around is reason for optimism.
But yeah, then those kind of like more role players at the bottom. Obviously, we see David Schneider playing well. Now that he's back with the team and I know, you know, Fenway has been maybe not historically always great for him, but he does have some happy memories there. So you can understand why he maybe likes to return there.
So getting protection from him, getting protection from like Miles Straw, like those are the types of guys that are going to be like your role players, especially now that like Ernie Clement has sort of, Moved up and it's probably more of like a middle of the order bat for you.
So I do think that getting some production from Jimenez would help would maybe soften the soften the effect of still Vlad struggling a little bit, which obviously at some point he's going to need to get going or the Blue Jays are maybe going to be able to hang on to a wildcard spot. Because as we've talked about before, there's just not really a lot of teams pushing for that right now. But yeah,
um you know here are the blue jays you do want to see vlad basically turn things on um but yeah i i think that you know if you can take advantage of a boston team that is having a bad year and get some of those guys that maybe haven't been as productive as they want to be um and you get them feeling good and you know fenway is always a nice place to hit too you know the the dimensions can be friendly uh can be friendly to the home team too but for whatever reason boston has played really bad at home this year i don't know why i don't know what's up that
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